According to some testing I’ve seen, there’s no difference in which order you do that.
I’ve also been seeing claims that Pokemon with 3 footprints under them may not actually exist - they might be there, or they might be ghosts that never get any closer no matter where you walk. Allegedly only Pokemon with 2 or fewer footprints can be counted on to actually exist. This might be due to lag and server issues, or they might be deliberately inserted to make the world seem more populated. So if you see some ultra-rare with 3 footprints under it, don’t waste your time wandering all over to try to get closer.
There’s slightly more nuance to the gyms. If it’s the same team color as you, you can deposit one of your pokemon there to help defend the gym. Also, you can “train” there (the boxing glove) which, if you win, will give you some EXP and the gym some prestige points. Prestige points are a buffer for helping to defend the gym. If it’s a rival gym, you can only battle it for control.
They do plan to implement trading/battling between friends from what I hear, but it’s not in there yet.
Also, a little-known bonus. If you are in a gym (or gyms), once a day you can go into the shop and click the shield in the upper right. This will give you coins and stardust according to how many gyms you’re in. So this is a way to get the cash-only items in the shop without actually spending cash. It’ll just take a while for the good stuff.
And please note, in general, for everybody: The game is not even a week old yet and the servers are still having issues here and there. Millions of people have been hyped and waiting for this and millions are currently trying to do all sorts of things. You may experience lags, timeouts, and so on, simply because there are SO MANY people playing the game. It will even out and work better with time.
I would say it’s better to evolve first. I say it for this reason:
When you wait and collect candies to evolve a pokemon, you have the ability to weed your pokemon out. You can continually keep the highest CP pokemon while transferring the lower ones for candies. If a better CP pokemon comes along, your old pokemon can then get transferred. In this way you end up with a very strong base pokemon to evolve just by waiting for enough candies to evolve. The evolved pokemon’s CP is directly based on the starter pokemon’s by percentile (a pokemon in the top 10% will evolve into a pokemon still in the top 10%), so overall you will need to spend far less stardust and candies to get a good strong pokemon in this way. You will only need to level it up a few times after evolving if you use this method rather than spend a ton of candies and stardust to level up a weak pokemon, and then still have to wait for enough candies to evolve it.
Something to be aware of, if you’re using an iOS device and signing up with your primary Google account:
I checked mine, and sure enough, All Access. I signed out and created a new Gmail account just for the game. Yeah, I lost 4 levels of progress, but better than than giving some game access to my whole Google account. Plus, now I can get Pikachu as my first Pokemon!
How do you get Pikachu as your first Pokemon? I still want sure what I was doing or what the pokemon were when I got the first one, and didn’t even notice what it was. I think it was a Pidgey.
A kid I was talking to today was horrified to learn that I probably transferred it to get candy to evolve a stronger Pidgey into a Pidgeotto. “How could you transfer your first Pokemon???” he wailed. Sorry, kid, Pokemon training’s a tough racket. You can’t afford to be sentimental.
I’m told (I have not tried it yet, but I intend to) that when you first start the game, you’re given a group of three Pokemon, of which you can catch one (that much I know, because I did it last time). But if you skip that group and move away, you get offered a different group. Do this five times, and Pikachu will be in the fifth group.
Another thing I’ve learned is to be judicious with evolving things. I’ve evolved pokemon only to catch a bigger and better one shortly later. Don’t evolve something unless you’ve caught one with the CP meter on the high side. I haven’t seen anything with more than 3/4 of the meter full, so I’m shooting for that from now on.
There is a gym near my office that I can see, but can’t interact with from my desk. It has changed hands a dozen times in the last hour.
I read about that. I earlier had the game signed into a gmail account of mine, but deleted the app when I discovered I couldn’t play it on my iPad. Should that be enough to sever the permission (I tried reinstalling from the cloud, and I was signed out), or do I have to sign in again to do something else?
I got down into the city and it was funny seeing other people playing the game. One gym was at a church. I pulled into the parking lot with one other car there and by the time I got ready to battle for the gym is changed colors to the same team as me and a truck drove from around behind the church and left the parking lot. I battled and as I was leaving one more car pulled into the lot. I went and got groceries and then decided to head back to the church. When I got there a car was leaving the parking lot and another was parking besides the building by the time I parked that car was leaving. I battled and lost so I left and as I was leaving two more cars pulled into the parking lot. I bet that church has never seen such steady traffic with no interest in going inside.
On a down note I haven’t been able to log in in 4 hour due to server issues. Maybe they’re upgrading to handle more load.
I did the same thing, but I’m torn, I don’t use my google account for anything more than YouTube and reading news articles on yahoo, I don’t check my gmail, and don’t use any other of their services, no photos, google drive, nothing mission critical, no important info in the account, my first P-GO account has me at level 6, and I’ve managed to catch a meowth and Tauren as my rarest finds, I also have 2 5k eggs close to hatching
However, my new account I did do the Pikachu starter select, I’m only level 4 right now, but I have caught a Gastly, Horsea, and Clefairy as my “rares” in this account…
Hmm, maybe I should just use this account as another color team, my first is team red, this one could be a blue or yellow team account…
There’s no way to transfer Pokemon between accounts, I assume…
Now let me see if I got this straight, theres ANOTHER story going around that a kid was tracking a Pokemon down a dark alley, and got waylaid, THAT is NOT true, according to Snopes.
The gym battles seem to be dominated by higher level players and there’s a high barrier to entry with a power creep mechanism in place.
When I first hit level 5, I found a gym in a somewhat out-of-the-way area and the guys to battle there were only 150-200 CP. But at the time my best pokemon were low 100s, and I got a few XP but mostly got stomped.
I came back to that same gym the next day after leveling my pokemon to low 200s, but to my dismay the enemies there were now 350-500 CP and I had no chance against them.
Came back again today with some 300-400 CP pokemon, and the gym opponents are at a whopping 800-1000+ CP. Didn’t even bother trying to fight those as I know they’d completely demolish me.
ETA: Oh, and by the way once you pick your team you cannot change it from the looks of things. I picked the blue team, but around here red seems to control the most gyms. Blue at least has a few though, and I’ve seen none under yellow control. Don’t pick team yellow.
Well there can only be so much power creep in the game, as each pokemon has a maximum stat. So eventually, if the other trainers never catch anything better than a Vaporeon or whatever, you will be able to at least match them or surpass them if you find and train up an equal or better pokemon.
Also, keep in mind the weaknesses of the main games carry over here. a 500CP Jolteon will absolutely mess up a 800CP Vaporeon despite the CP difference. And using something with flying or normal moves like Pidgeot against a rock pokemon like Rhyhorn isn’t going to do much at all. So if you find more unique pokemon types or have more unique movesets you can wreck players above you in level.
Yellow is pretty popular around here. Then Blue. Red seems to be the one that is trailing.
I agree with the barrier to Gyms. But I’ve also found out that when you battle a rival gym you get to send in 6 pokemon. So you should be able to take out one or two as long as they aren’t too much higher than you. My first instinct was to visit a gym of my color, but that is a mistake. For same-color gyms you have to win one-on-one. For rival gyms you can send in 6. I almost got a 500+CP pokemon with my sub 200’s. I assume if I actually knew what the controls were and what I should be doing in a battle, winning against higher level pokemon would be even more possible.
To degrade a gym, you don’t have to defeat all the pokemon at once. Just at least one. And since revives and potions are essentially ‘free’ there really isn’t any reason not to try. As far as I can tell, there are no uses for revives and potions other than dealing with the aftermath of gyms. I’m to the point where I have too many revives and potions I’m running out of room for stuff that actually want.